


Interstellar Space

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 09:28:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30019692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: Ed didn't spend much time imagining an after-the-fact, but if he had, he wouldn't have been betting on insomnia.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Comments: 9
Kudos: 241





	Interstellar Space

**Author's Note:**

> I think a lot of you already know this or have inferred it from hundreds of thousands of words of unsubtle hints, but one of my pet peeves with the ending of Brotherhood is that it glosses over any indication of the long-term trauma healing that all of the characters would have to work through, _especially_ Ed. It's always been extra frustrating to me because so many other parts of the series get that shit so right, but the ending is just "OKAY, EVERYTHING IS 'NICE' NOW, KBYE!" ~~Dark FMA, show us the forbidden PTSD recovery~~
> 
> Anyway, this one can be a companion piece for [Stardust](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29614587), or not, as you like. :] I semi-quasi-kinda-deliberately structured it the same way. ~~And then it got away from me a bit. Again.~~

Ed had had his share of sleepless nights, back in the olden days—he’d understood a lot of why what Al was going through was so goddamn excruciating. Some days are just too long, and just too dark around the edges; knocking your brain unconscious sometimes wipes the slate completely clean in a way that changes everything.

Al couldn’t have that. Al just had to find a way to pass the bleak hours, and the angry ones, and the empty ones. All of them. Every single night.

What Ed has now is a different version of that problem. He suspects that it’s partly just based in the good news—in the fact that he used to run his body ragged nonstop, and he doesn’t have to do that anymore. His brain is used to drawing on the dregs of his own energy to burn the midnight oil, used to reading complicated theory after days of tromping around and traveling and hand-to-hand, all of it underpinned by an insuppressible terror that none of it was going to matter anyway. Even before the other considerations—Ed still suspects that he was feeding some of his essence into Al’s body at the Gate—he was living at the edge of his own capacity for five solid years. He’s used to using himself up.

And now…

It’s not that he _wants_ that—he doesn’t _want_ any of it back; everything is so much better now that he routinely wakes up convinced that his current life is the dream.

But it has left him in a weird spot, physiologically, where his body isn’t tired enough to drag his mind over the cliff into sleeping at the end of the day. And his brain has all this extra energy that it’s accustomed to expending on things like contingency plans and safeguards for risky transmutations and nasty names to call Mustang and fear and fear and fear and _fear_ —

He does still curate a cache of insults for Roy, but he doesn’t have to devote nearly as much attention to it anymore, since there’s a lot less _You shitty arrogant useless fuckoff excuse for a bastard, I can_ see _that you have ears_ and a lot more _So how do the taxpayers feel about you drawing hearts around our initials when you’re on the clock, asshole?_

Around all of that, though, his brain trained itself to cycle through dozens of different stages of preparation and of panic to try to keep the rest of him alive. He doesn’t know how to untrain it. There isn’t really anything to panic over or prepare for, but he doesn’t know how to make it _stop_.

What that amounts to is that lately he’s blown a whole hell of a lot of hours of his life lying in bed, staring at the ceiling or at the wall or into the middle distance in the dark, willing his thoughts to quit spinning and shuffling, trying to make them quiet down enough for him to rest. It’s not as bad as what Al went through—nowhere near as bad. But it is, in its own right, pretty crap.

Ed spent most of his formative years passing out on the floor of the library next to Al, irrespective of anyone’s sleep habits, and almost being late to school the next morning; and then the next few passing out on a lousy cot or a train seat next to Al when Al had no sleep habits at all. Nowadays, Al sleeps like a cat—often, at the drop of a hat, and with enormous gusto and appreciation. It’s probably deliberate somehow, specifically to encourage the cat comparison, but Ed hasn’t figured out a way to prove that yet.

Roy… doesn’t sleep like that.

Sometimes, Roy falls asleep right away—his head hits the pillow, and he mumbles a few things in response to whatever teeth-brushing conversation Ed’s trying to continue now that there isn’t any foam in the way, and then he’s out like a light.

Sometimes, he’s tossing and turning—carefully, quietly, trying to minimize the rustling and the sighing very softly under his breath—for almost as long as Ed is.

Sometimes he sleeps soundly, too; and sometimes he sleeps like he’s dreaming about getting strangled by a homunculus, which… could be what it is, actually. Or the dreams could be about Isvhal, or about the Gate, or about any of the rest of the shit that went down that day, or about any of the people that he’s lost, or…

Sometimes he sleeps fitfully, or very lightly, and even a strong breath from Ed will wake him—let alone Ed trying to slide to the edge of the mattress and sit up and squint helplessly at the face of the alarm clock.

So far, Ed has tried reading long, boring books before bed; five kinds of herbal teas; measured breaths and calming thoughts; and warm baths. He’s the most disappointed that the last one didn’t work; he was really optimistic about the concept of cooling down after the bath mimicking the way that sleep lowers your body temperature, which is supposed to help ease you along.

Tonight must be a fitful night. Ed rolls onto his side, regrets it, rolls back, and lays his left arm over his eyes—he’s trying to be quiet, and he gnaws on his lip instead of sighing, but Roy shifts closer, and his breathing pattern changes.

“Hey,” Roy says.

“Hey yourself,” Ed says, which has nothing whatsoever to do with feeling like crap about waking him up, obviously.

Roy’s fingertips slide under the sheets and graze against his side. “Talk to me.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Ed says. If he stays completely still, his body can’t cave to the desire to shimmy itself closer to Roy’s hand, to Roy’s warmth, to Roy’s everything. Roy’s given him enough—too much. Way too much. “I just… it’s fine. Go back to sleep.”

“No,” Roy says, incongruously cheerfully. Ed also resists the urge to grind his teeth. “It doesn’t matter if there’s something to say. Just talk. Tell me about what you’re doing in the lab this week. Or about Al. Anything.”

This time, Ed lets the sigh out, even though it makes him feel like… well, like Roy faced with a pile of paperwork, really. “It’s—”

“Trust me,” Roy says.

Ed makes a face at him in the dark. He’ll know. “But I don’t—”

“Whatever it is,” Roy says, “I will enjoy hearing about it. Just start. Start in the middle. I don’t mind.”

Ed reaches over and pushes very gently at his shoulder. Roy has the best shoulders of anybody that Ed has ever met. Ed didn’t even know that shoulders were a thing that you could be into, before Roy, but… damn. _Damn_.

“Just go back to sleep,” he says.

Roy catches Ed’s hand—effortlessly, even in the dark—and kisses it. He works his way upward; wrist, heel, palm, the bend of Ed’s knuckles, the fingertips—

“You first,” Roy says. “Tell me a bedtime story. Tell me the real story behind one of those reports that Al edited before it made it to my desk. Tell me what you were thinking on our first date.”

“Don’t be a sap,” Ed mutters.

“Try to stop me,” Roy says.

Ed retrieves his arm and lays it over his mouth this time, but he can’t quite manage to quell the groan. “Go to _sleep_.”

“Not without you,” Roy says. He sounds delighted. He is a monster. “This will go much faster if you just—”

“This is emotional blackmail,” Ed says. “See if I vote for _you_ when we get elections.”

He’s figured out, by way of the usual trial and error, that Roy freaks out a little bit internally every time that he talks about Roy’s diabolical democracy plan as a certainty. As far as he’s concerned, it is; and if Roy’s going to try to push his buttons instead of going back to sleep, then… fine. All’s fair.

“I’d make it worth your while,” Roy says, and Ed can hear the grin in his voice. “Why don’t you tell me all the reasons that I’m unworthy of your vote?”

“At some point,” Ed says, “I’m gonna crack, and I’m gonna tell you a goat story.”

Roy manages not to sound quite as smug as they both know he is. “I would love to hear a goat story.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Ed says. “It’s a punishment.”

“Then I deserve it,” Roy says.

Very, very unfortunately, Ed sort of has to admit that he walked into that one, with all the grace and dignity of walking into the pole of a street sign while thinking about something else.

“You,” Ed says, in the single most threatening voice that he can manage at some ungodly hour with Roy’s hand still brushing gently up and down his side, “will regret this.”

He can still hear Roy’s smile in the dark. “We’ll see.”


End file.
